Things

By | April 26, 2018

Some things:

  • The 100k Drop begins May 7th (Bank Holiday Monday) on Channel 4 at 4pm, avoiding the big two but still clashing with Bother’s Bar and pensioner favourite Tipping Point.
  • There is a Taskmaster book coming out on September 6th. £9.99 on Kindle, £12.99 paperback according to Amazon.
  • And speaking of Taskmaster I’m VERY PLEASED UKTV Play don’t seem to be splitting the audience by showing them a week in advance this time round so everyone can discuss on the same page. Phew. The new series starts on Wednesday 2nd May. There is an exclusive task though.
  • Not a gameshow but likely to appeal to people who like them, the second series of excellent Brazilian drama 3% is on Netflix from this weekend. “… It’s what Survivor would be a bit like if it was done through the prism of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and The Hunger Games by way of the board game The Resistance. It has violence but not excessive amounts, it is rated 15,” is how I originally described it.

29 thoughts on “Things

  1. Chris B

    Very minor Taskmaster related trivia – the show/Dave is sponsoring a give away on The Chris Moyles Show this week on Radio X and they are doing a mini Taskmaster on air. They are taking some of the easier small scale tasks then a member of the public backs one of the team to win the cash. The ones I’ve heard are who can sneeze quickest and blow the most unlikely object off a table.

    Interesting, but only in the way it’s been adapted for a radio morning show that has to abide by certain rules and give away prizes. So one difference is the the competitors play at the same time and can see what the other person is doing. The second is the blowing off the table one is very “official” in terms of winner, where all the objects were pre-weighed and it was basically the heaviest object won and there wasn’t any way to argue that like on the show since they are giving away £2k and Ofcom might get sniffy. There are some videos on Facebook for anyone really interested but to be honest, I don’t think anyone involved at the station has seen the show for more than a few minutes.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      I listen to the Chris Moyles podcasts (although I’m about two months behind with everything for various reasons) and this wouldn’t be the first time there’s been some sort of Taskmaster tie-in competition, although this sounds far more “official” than the previous ones. I know what you mean about it sounding like they’ve never seen the show before though.

      Reply
    1. David

      Didn’t they have a problem with the voting awhile back? Anyway, this makes a lot more sense to me (and makes it a bit fairier- between SdR and SdH, women weren’t voted in a whole lot….and they can vary the qualifier games too)

      Reply
  2. Mathew Palmieri

    i posted it in another post, but screw it…. Netflix is debuting a korean mystery variety game show, “Busted” featuring comedian Yoo-Jae Suk on May 4th….
    https://youtu.be/v4rIeRr2CB0
    Looks like a more… comedic version of crime scence, i guess? featuring escape room puzzles….
    (i first heard about this show though vlogger/creator and host of escape the night, accusing it of plagarism… no seriously, considering he stole from whodunnit…IMO (you can watch the first season here: (https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x57mpp) shameless plus shameless plug)
    the cast features Lee Kwang Soo , Kim Jongmin, alongside actors Ahn Jae Wook and Park Min Young, EXO’s maknae Sehun and Gugudan’s Sejeong. if any of these names are fammilar to you then let me know. Cant wait! according to the netflix description their gonna have a episodic case by case format with a larger arc: “What happened to Project D?”

    Reply
    1. Matt Clemson

      I’ve seen a bit of Running Man in the past, so I’ve seen Yoo-Jae Suk working with Lee Kwang Soo, both regulars on that. Intrigued by this premise, although with those two involved I’ll have a little concern about whether they’ll play the game straight or not – I guess that’ll become apparent in due course, at least. Cautiously interested.

      Reply
      1. John R

        As do the TV listings, which also suggest each show will feature 2 games

        Reply
  3. Chris M. Dickson

    Anybody (who didn’t attend the tapings…) care to make a prediction about who might win the next UK Taskmaster? Tricky one to call, for me. Obviously I am completely rooting for Tim Vine. On one hand, he’s proven himself somewhat limited at improv; on the other hand, it doesn’t matter that much in the majority of challenges. My guess is that his chances rely on the extent to which Greg likes his style of humour, and I have a suspicion that Greg will choose to make a soft target of him as he did Mark Watson, Hugh Dennis and (somewhat) Josh Widdicombe.

    Russell Howard has to be the safe option to start as favourite, but I’m rubbish at predicting these things.

    Reply
    1. Alex McMillan

      All in on Liza Tarbuck right now, I really liked her approach to the “exclusive task” on UKTV Play.

      Reply
    2. Brig Bother Post author

      Although if one of the tasks is “throw a pen so it lands behind your ear” he’s sorted. I get the feeling that Tim will do well in the more objectively judged tasks.

      I suspect if anyone’s going to get picked on it’ll be Russell Howard.

      Alice Levene I know from Big Brother and Asim Chaudry are largely unknown quantities in this for me I think, I reckon Liza Tarbuck’s the dark horse.

      Reply
    1. Chris M. Dickson

      It’s really not. If you imagine just about every Eurovision fan knows the 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scoring system, this also just about starts 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3 and then goes two and a half, two, nearly two, one and a half, one and a bit, one and a tiny bit, one, almost one, very nearly one, nearly one and so on down to about one tenth. The exponential formula is pleasing but I’d probably have sacrificed it for relatively easy numbers.

      To be honest, Graham probably doesn’t need to explain it, unless he wants to pretend it’s complicated.

      Reply
      1. Chris M. Dickson

        This is, of course, not quite right. The principle is right but the figures I’ve quoted are a little off – it looks like even the last-placed song gets (just over) one point and the fall is slightly shallower than I’ve suggested.

        I’ve not yet been able to find what the formula, or the scores, actually are. The official rules don’t actually include the details, shunting them off to a “Green Document”, which is not made available to the public. Where’s the fun in that?

        Reply
  4. Chris M. Dickson

    While we’re talking Taskmaster, it turns out it’s shown in Australia on a subscription channel called BBC UKTV, which is only slightly confusing if you have the context. One of the last things I thought before I fell asleep last night is if there are local versions around the world, you could do a cracking Australian version with Hard Quiz‘s Tom Gleeson as a Davies-esque local TM. The role of Alex Horne would be played, of course, by Alex Horne, in the Mark Labbett travelling Englishman stylee.

    Reply
    1. Lee

      i quite like the music to De la Terre a la lune. But it was rarely used. (Including international)

      Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Thanks for this, yes Dark Arts required, although I was still getting ads for UK stuff. And Dutch, for some reason.

      Once I got over the endless bloody whooping I enjoyed this, most of the cast are quite likable (although it took me until episode two to warm to some of them) although Liza Lamprenelli is just shouting in lieu of humour. I like Reggie Watts usually but it took a bit of convincing to think of him as the Taskamaster, although he seemed to relish disqualifying people so. Great to see US comics are just as useless as getting a ping pong ball out of a tube as UK ones.

      Intrigued to see if there’s a hidden solution task in the eight episodes, and what the reactions to it will be.

      Reply
      1. Matt Clemson

        The Buzzerblog review suggested that all tasks in this series were ones that had been used in the UK series, so it’s a little tricky to implement a hidden-solution task if there’s a possibility the player had seen it before.

        On which note, I do wonder if the way the task was introduced for the ‘do something that’ll look cool in reverse’ task was a nod to Tree Wizard.

        Reply

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